Every Little Thing She Does

SPOILER ALERT! Those of you who have not seen the show, be warned. This review is going to contain spoilers about the episode. If you have not seen it yet, watch it right now and read my review in 20 minutes, or prepare to have some of the critical plot mentioned before you view it. I am assuming many of you are bronies, or fans of the show, and you are reading this review for an interesting insight on an episode you have seen countless times already (as have I), in which case, continue reading, and enjoy!

We start out the episode with Twilight Sparkle giving Starlight Glimmer a “challenge” in magic. Starlight excels in all of the tasks (teleportation, transfiguration, and shield spells). Starlight casts a shield spell so powerful that it not only deflects Twilight’s spell attack, but knocks the books right off of the shelves. Twilight decides it’s best to take a break from studying magic for a while.

Starlight uses an acceleration spell to quickly clean up the books. Twilight is impressed, so Starlight combines the acceleration spell with a duplication spell, which allows her to be two places at once. Pinkie Pie taught us why this is a bad idea. Thankfully, before we get too many Starlight Glimmers, she ends the spell, returning to her normal/singular form. Twilight points out that Starlight’s magic is good, but she has not tackled any friendship lessons since meeting Trixie. Twilight has to go give a presentation about enchanted artifacts later that day and assigns Starlight to complete a friendship lesson while she’s away.

Starlight heads to her room and plays with some blocks, clearly not wanting to get started on a friendship lesson. She hears a knock on the door and hurries over to her desk, where she pretends to be choosing a friendship lesson. Spike enters the room, and Starlight retrieves them friendship lessons from the bottom of the trash and Spike reads them.

Spike tells Starlight it is okay if she is nervous about the friendship lessons, but Starlight denies feeling nervous at all. Since she is so good with magic, she thinks friendship is easy. Combining two complicated spells was maybe a challenge, but the friendship lessons are sure to be a breeze. In fact, she thinks it will be so easy that she sets it upon herself to complete all five tasks at once.

Starlight tries to get everypony to go to a certain location, but there seems to be issues with this. Fluttershy wants the animals to be where they are happy, Rarity thinks the library is too dusty to sew, and Rainbow Dash thinks there is nowhere in the castle to chillax. (Starlight just assumed chillaxing could be done anywhere.) There is also some issues with the timing of each activity. Pinkie wants to bake first, but Rarity doesn’t want to design dresses after Starlight bakes. Pinkie tries to sing a song about the joy of baking. The first few seconds seem obnoxious (just like Pinkie Pie is), but thankfully, Starlight shuts her down; there is no time for songs on her tight schedule.

While the Mane Five are still loudly expressing their concerns, Starlight leaves for a moment. She catches her breath and decides to use a bit of magic to make things go more smoothly. By a “bit”, I mean she is weaving three complex spells together and then casting it on her friends. No big deal or anything. (Also, didn’t Starlight learn at some point that she should not cheat in friendship lessons with magic?)

Starlight congratulates herself on a spell well-cast, and returns to the group. Maybe her spell was not so great though, seeing as it essentially turned her friends into immobile mindless zombie robot slaves. She is worried, but then remembers she needs to trigger the spell. She does this, and they’re basically the same, but able to move and talk. They do as she asks.

Starlight can finally begin work on the friendship lessons. First on her list is baking with Pinkie Pie. She reads the first few instructions from a cook book, and Pinkie follows them with immense speed. Starlight heads off to do some other friendship lessons, leaving Pinkie to “Just keep following the instructions in the book.” Uh oh. I think we all know where this is headed.

For the next task, Starlight goes to work with Rarity. She finds an image of a dress in a magazine and instructs the fashionista to make one just like it. Of course, normal Rarity would object to copying a design, and would insist on coming up with her own, creative style. Zombie robot Rarity happily agreed to create a dress just like in the picture, though.

On to scrapbooking! Starlight asks Applejack to tell her the story behind some of the photos, but Applejack gives every detail and bores Starlight. Rather than listening to the entire story, Starlight has Applejack sum it up into a single sentence. Now, if I heard a summary about Granny Smith realizing she didn’t know how to teach a pig how to backstroke, I would certainly want to hear every detail. Starlight just instructs Applejack to keep putting the photos in order and moves on to yet another friend and activity.

While Starlight was working with others, Fluttershy’s animals ran away because Starlight did not order her to keep them from doing so. Starlight orders Fluttershy to gather all of the animals in the castle and orders Rainbow Dash to prepare the spot she chose for chillaxing. She then goes back to scrapbooking with Applejack. The stories are really interesting, but for some reason, Starlight does not think so.

Starlight goes to check on how the ponies are doing. Rarity made a drawing of the dress on paper, like the picture. Starlight re-instructed her to make a real one, and make it bigger than in the image. When she checks on Pinkie Pie, she is met with an abundance of baked goods; Pinkie had followed the instructions in the book in order, not just the one they started working on. I knew this was going to happen.

She uses her magic to take Pinkie Pie out of the kitchen. They head into the foyer, where they discover Fluttershy, covered in spiders, insects, snakes, and what looks to be an opossum. I love Fluttershy, but this is just creepy. Ew. Also, the castle fills with smoke, as there was food in the oven when Starlight took Pinkie Pie away from her baking. She calls for water, so Rainbow Dash brings in some massive storm clouds. The castle gets flooded. Just when Starlight thinks things can’t get any worse, Twilight and Spike arrive home.

Fluttershy, no! Get those things off of you!

While Starlight is going over what she did, trying to see where her magic went wrong, Twilight untangles the spell (It is very powerful and the Mane 5 will feel a magic hangover in the morning). Starlight explains that maybe magic was not the best idea, but she was scared about the friendship lessons. She worried she would be bad at the friendship lessons and disappoint her friends, even though she just ended up disappointing them anyway.

Twilight explains that the lessons are just a way to get to know her friends better by doing something they like to do, and it doesn’t matter if Starlight is good at baking or anything else. Starlight realizes she missed the point, and she apologizes to the (very magically hungover) ponies the next morning. They accept her apology and help her clean up the castle. During the clean up, Starlight ends up baking, scrapbooking, sewing, and helping animals with her friends. The only friendship lesson she hasn’t done is chillaxing with Rainbow Dash. They set up an area above the castle and Starlight, Twilight, Spike, and the other friends all lay in the sun and relax.

Although a bit cliché and predictable, I did enjoy the episode. The lessons (Not to use magic on your friends/Spending quality time together is more important than being good at what you are doing) were decent, but not great. I think Starlight should have already known not to cast magic on her friends, but the fact that she shows flaws as a student, and is still learning how to do friendship is good. She isn’t some know-it-all Mary Sue who instantly reforms into pure good. The episode was comical, and I loved the bit where Starlight keeps Pinkie from singing an annoying song! All in all, a good episode.